Courage the Cowardly Dog
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Courage the Cowardly Dog

Conway the Contaminationist is an episode from Season 3.

The episode was produced in 2001 and premiered on Cartoon Network in the United States on June 14, 2002.

Plot[]

As Muriel is cleaning the farmhouse, she looks outside the window and sees white pages falling from the sky. Courage thinks it's snow, but he soon finds out that the pages are leaflets that read "Live Longer, Live Better." The papers eventually come from a worn-down, piston-powered airplane piloted by a shady individual with green lumpy skin, and is seen emitting smoke and skywriting the same quote. As he finishes, his plane begins to stall. He flies dangerously low to the ground, almost hitting Courage, and crashes into the windmill.

Muriel comes to tend to the bizarre figure in the plane, who tells her he wants sludge. Courage grabs a jar and picks sludge from the drains, rain gutters, and even Eustace's feet. He gives the jar to the man and he drinks it, becoming good as new. The character introduces himself as Conway, and tells the Bagges that living in pure filth will make them live longer. He manages to reverse the vacuum cleaner Muriel is using, which emits all of the dust it stored into the living room. During this, he says "out with the good air, in with the bad". He convinces them that they will get used to it, eventually, and that he thinks it's better for their health. But he ups the ante, as he soon has Muriel bathing in sludge. When Courage intervenes, Conway stops him, saying that living in filth is better.

Eventually, the farmhouse is full of filth, trash, and sludge, which a weak, dirty, and frail looking Muriel and Eustace are entombed in for several days, while Courage is still healthy and clean. One minor detail is that a decaying pig is seen laughing as it is walking towards the distance. After Conway releases a toxic fume from hazardous waste into the living room, making matters worse, Courage takes a look outside and notices that the hazmat team has put the farmhouse on quarantine and condemnation, because of all the filth that has turned the farmhouse into a potential biohazard.

Courage installs a doggie door on the front door, so he can escape and figure out a plan to clean up the farmhouse in a timely manner. He decides to take the wreckage of Conway's plane and installs a large red balloon on the exhaust in order to make a large, highly effective vacuum cleaner. He points it towards the door and sucks Conway in, as well as all the filth. Eventually, this cleanses the farmhouse back to its original state, with Conway being trapped inside the balloon full of filth, to which he is eventually comfortable inside it, and that both Eustace and Muriel return to their old, healthy selves as Courage releases the balloon that Conway is trapped in. Muriel then told Courage to go take a bath from all the filth, but Eustace told Muriel to hose Courage outside, as he didn't want him with filth in the house, which in turn, hurt his feelings. The episode ends with the same decaying pig from earlier sitting on Eustace's red chair with a copy of the Nowhere News, as he laughs away just before the frame transitions to the end.

Characters[]

Trivia[]

  • It's unknown what Conway really is; he could actually be a 193 year old man like he claims to be. However, due to his alien-like appearance, which resembles Kiff from Futurama, Conway might be an alien disguising as a human, who comes from a planet where filth is healthy to its citizens. There is no other evidence suggesting he's an alien as far as that theory goes, so he could be anything.
  • The scene where Courage runs away from Conway’s plane when it got too close to him is a reference to the famous scene in the Alfred Hitchcock movie North by Northwest.

Production Notes[]

  • Although this episode premiered in the United States on June 14, 2002, it was actually produced in 2001 according to the credits.
    • This episode was finished on August 3, 2001.[1]

References[]

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